The Mayor. Not just his son but actually the Mayor. With his clean hat and his clean face and his clean clothes and his shiny boots and his upright pose. We don’t never actually get to see him much in Prentisstown, not no more, not if yer not in his close little circle, but when you do, he always looks like this, even thru a pair of binos. Like he knows how to take care of hisself and you don’t.

I push some more buttons till I’m as close as I can get. There’s five of them, no, six, the men whose Noise you hear doing those freaky exercises in the Mayor’s house. I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME, that kinda thing. There’s Mr Collins, Mr MacInerny, Mr O’Hare, and Mr Morgan, all on horses, too, itself a rare sight cuz horses are hard to keep alive on New World and the Mayor guards his personal herd with a whole raft of men with guns.

And there’s Mr bloody Prentiss Jr, riding up next to his father, wearing a shiner from where Cillian hit him. Good.

But then I realize that means whatever happened at the farm is definitely over with. Whatever happened to Ben and Cillian is done. I put the binos down for a sec and swallow it away.

I put the binos back up. The group’s stopped for a minute and are talking to each other, looking over a large piece of paper that’s gotta be a way better map than mine and–

Oh, man.

Oh, man, you gotta be kidding.

Aaron.

Aaron comes walking outta the trees behind ’em.

Stinking, stupid, rutting, effing, bloody Aaron.

Most of his head is wrapped in bandages but he’s pacing the ground a little way back from the Mayor, waving his hands in the air, looking like he’s probably preaching even if no one looks like listening.

HOW? How could he have lived? Doesn’t he ever ruddy DIE?

It’s my fault. My stupid effing fault. Cuz I’m a coward. I’m a weak and stupid coward and cuz of that Aaron’s alive and cuz of that he’s leading the Mayor thru the ruddy swamp after us. Cuz I didn’t kill him, he’s coming to kill me.

I feel sick. I bend over double and hold my stomach, moaning a bit. My blood is charging so hard I hear Manchee creep a little ways away from me.

“It’s my fault, Manchee,” I say. “I did this.”

“Your fault,” he says, confused and just repeating what I said but right on the money, ain’t he?

I make myself look thru the binos again and I see the Mayor call Aaron over. Since men started being able to hear their thoughts, Aaron thinks animals are unclean and won’t go near ’em so it takes the Mayor a coupla tries but eventually Aaron comes tromping over to look at the map. He listens while the Mayor asks him something.

And then he looks up.

Looks up thru the swamp trees and sky.

Looks up to this hilltop.

Looks right at me.

He can’t see me. No way. Can he? Not without binos like the girl’s and I don’t see any on the men, never saw anything like ’em in Prentisstown. Gotta be. He can’t see me.

But like a great pitiless thing he raises his arm and points, points it directly at me, like I’m sitting across a table from him.

I’m running before I can even think, running back down the bluff and back to the girl as fast as I can, reaching behind me and pulling out my knife, Manchee barking up a storm on my heels. I get into the trees and down and round the big mess of shrubs and she’s still sitting on the rock but at least she looks up as I run to her.

“Come on!” I say, grabbing her arm. “We gotta go!”

She pulls back away from me but I don’t let go.

“No!” I shout. “We have to go! NOW!”

She starts hitting out with her fists, clonking me a coupla times on the face.

But I ain’t letting go.

“LISTEN!” I say and I open up my Noise for her. She hits me once more but then she’s looking, looking at my Noise as it comes, seeing the pictures of what’s waiting for us in the swamp. Check that, what’s not waiting for us, what’s making every effort to come get us. Aaron, who won’t die, bending all his thoughts to finding us and coming this time with men on horseback. Who are a lot faster than we are.

The girl’s face squishes up, like she’s in the worst pain ever and she opens her mouth like she’s going to yell but nothing comes out. Still nothing. Still no Noise, no sound, no nothing at all coming from her.

I just don’t get it.

“I don’t know what’s ahead,” I say. “I don’t know nothing about nothing but whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than what’s behind. It’s gotta be.”

And as she hears me, her face changes. It clears up to almost blankness again and she presses her lips together.

“Go! Go! Go!” Manchee barks.

She holds out her hand for her bag. I hand it to her. She stands, shoves the binos in, loops it over her shoulder and looks me in the eye.

“Okay, then,” I say.

And so that’s how I set off running full out towards a river for the second time in two days, Manchee with me again and this time a girl on my heels.

Well, past my heels most of the time, she’s ruddy fast, she is.

We go back up the hill and down the other side, the last of the swamp really starting to disappear around us and turning into regular woods. The ground gets way firmer and easier to run on and it’s sloping more downhill than it is up, which may be the first piece of luck we’ve had. We start catching the proper river in brief glances off to our left side as we go. My rucksack’s bashing me in the back as I run and I’m gasping for breath.

But I’m holding my knife.

I swear. I swear right now before God or whatever. If Aaron ever comes in my reach again, I will kill him. I ain’t hesitating again. No way. No how. I ain’t. I swear to you.

I will kill him.

I’ll ruddy well kill him.

You just watch me.

The ground we’re running on is getting a bit steeper side to side, taking us thru leafier, lighter trees and first closer to the river and then away from it again and again as we run. Manchee’s tongue is hanging out of his mouth in a big pant, bouncing along as we go. My heart’s thumping a million beats and my legs are about to fall off my body but still we run.

We veer close to the water again and I call out, “Wait.” The girl, who’s got pretty far in front of me, stops. I run to the river’s edge, take a swift look round for crocs, then lean down and scoop up a few handfuls of water into my mouth. Tastes sweeter than it really should. Who knows what’s in it, coming outta the swamp, but you gotta drink. I feel the girl’s silence lean down next to me as she drinks, too. I scoot a little ways away. Manchee laps up his share and you can hear us all taking in great raking breaths between slurps.

I look up to where we’re going, wiping my mouth. Next to the river is starting to become too rocky and steep to run on and I can see a path cutting its way up from the riverbank, going along the top of the canyon.

I blink, as I realize.

I can see a path. Someone’s cut a path.

The girl turns and looks. The path carries up and along as the river drops below it, getting deeper and faster and turning into rapids. Someone made that path.

“It’s gotta be the way to the other settlement,” I say. “Gotta be.”

And then, in the distance, we hear hoofbeats. Faint, but on their way.

I don’t say another word cuz we’re already on our feet and running up the path. The river falls farther and farther away beneath us and the larger mountain rears up on the other side of the river. On our side there’s a thick forest starting to stretch back from the clifftops. The path’s clearly been cut so men would have a place to travel down the river.

It’s more than wide enough for horses. More than wide enough for five or six, in fact.

It ain’t a path at all, I realize. It’s a road.

We fly along it as it bends and turns, the girl ahead, then me, then Manchee, running along.

Till I nearly bump into her and knock her off the trail.

“What’re you doing?!” I shout, grabbing onto her arms to keep us both from falling off the cliff, trying to keep the knife from accidentally killing her.

And then I see what she’s seeing.

A bridge, way on up ahead of us. It goes from one cliff edge to the other, crossing the river what’s gotta be thirty, forty metres above it. The road or path or whatever stops on our side at the bridge and becomes rock and dense forest beyond. There’s nowhere to go but the bridge.

The first shades of an idea start to form.

The hoofbeats are louder now. I look back and see clouds of dust rising from where the Mayor is following.

“Come on!” I say, running past her, making for the bridge as fast as I can. We pound down the clifftop path, kicking up our own dust, Manchee’s ears flattened back, running fast. We get there and it’s way more than just a footbridge, two metres wide at least. It looks like mostly rope tied into wooden stakes driven into the rock at either end, with tight wooden planks running all the way to the other side.

I test it with my foot but it’s so sturdy it don’t even bounce. More than enough to take me and the girl and a dog.

More than enough to take men on horseback who wanted to cross it, in fact.

Whoever built it, meant it to last.

I look back again down the river at where we’ve run. More dust, louder hoofbeats, and the whispers of men’s Noise on its way. I think I hear young Todd but I’m only imagining it cuz Aaron’ll be way behind on foot.

But I do see what I wanna see: this bridge is the only place where you can cross the river, from back where we’ve run to miles on farther ahead as you look.

Maybe another piece of luck is coming our way.

“Let’s go,” I say. We run across and it’s so well-made you can’t even see twixt the gaps in the planks of wood. We might as well still be on the path. We get to the other side and the girl stops and turns to me, no doubt seeing my idea in my Noise, already waiting for me to act.

The knife is still in my hand. Power at the end of my arm.

Maybe at last I can do some good with it.

I look over where this end of the bridge is tied to the stakes in the rock. The knife has a fearsome serrated edge on part of the blade, so I choose the likeliest looking knot and start sawing on it.

I saw and saw.

The hoofbeats get louder, echoing down the canyon.

But if there suddenly ain’t no bridge–

I saw some more.

And some more.

And some more.

And I’m just not making no progress at all.

“What the hell?” I say, looking at where I been cutting. There’s hardly a scratch there. I touch the serration on the knife with my finger and it pricks and bleeds almost immediately. I look closer at the rope. It looks like it’s coated in some kind of thin resin.

Some kind of ruddy tough, steel-like resin that ain’t for cutting.

“I don’t believe this,” I say, looking up at the girl.

She’s got her binos to her eyes, looking back the way we came down the river.

“Can you see ’em?”

I look down the river but you don’t need binos at all. You can see ’em coming with yer own two eyes. Small but growing larger and not slowing down, thundering their hooves like there’s no tomorrow.

We got three minutes. Maybe four.

Crap.

I start sawing again, fast and strong as I can, forcing my arm back and forth hard as I can make it, sweat popping out all over the place and new aches forming to keep all the old ones company. I saw and saw and saw, dripping water down my nose onto the knife.

“C’mon, c’mon,” I say thru my teeth.

I lift the knife. I’ve managed to get thru one tiny little bit of resin on one tiny little knot on one huge effing bridge.

“Goddam it!” I spit.

I saw some more and more and more. And more and more than that, sweat running into my eyes and starting to sting.

“Todd!” Manchee barks, his alarm spilling out all over the place.

I saw more. And more.

But the only thing that happens is that the knife catches and I smash my knuckles into the stake, bloodying them.

“GODDAM IT!” I scream, throwing the knife down. It bounces along, stopping just at the girl’s feet. “GODDAM IT ALL!”

Cuz that’s it, ain’t it?

That’s the end of everything.

Our one stupid chance that wasn’t a chance at all.

We can’t outrun the horses and we can’t cut down a stupid mega-road bridge and we’re going to be caught and Ben and Cillian are dead and we’re going to be killed ourselves and the world is going to end and that’s it.

A redness comes over my Noise, like nothing I ever felt before, sudden and raw, like a red-hot brand pressing into my own self, a burning bright redness of everything that’s made me hurt and keeps on hurting, a roaring rage of the unfairness and the injustice and the lies.

Of everything coming back to one thing.

I raise my eyes up to the girl’s and she steps back from the force of it.

“You,” I say and there ain’t gonna be no stopping me. “This is all you! If you hadn’t shown up in that ruddy swamp, none of this woulda happened! I’d be home RIGHT NOW! I’d be tending my effing sheep and living in my effing house and sleeping in my own EFFING BED!”

Except I don’t say “effing”.

“But oh NO,” I shout, getting louder. “Here’s YOU! Here’s YOU and yer SILENCE! And the whole world gets SCREWED!”

I don’t realize I’m walking towards her till I see her stepping back. But she just looks back at me.

And I don’t hear a goddam thing.

“You’re NOTHING!” I scream, stepping forward some more. “NOTHING! You’re nothing but EMPTINESS! There’s nothing in you! You’re EMPTY and NOTHING and we’re gonna die FOR NOTHING!”

I have my fists clenched so hard my nails are cutting into my palms. I’m so furious, my Noise raging so loud, so red, that I have to raise my fists to her, I have to hit her, I have to beat her, I have to make her ruddy silence STOP before it SWALLOWS ME AND THE WHOLE EFFING WORLD!

I take my fist and punch myself hard in the face.

I do it again, hitting where my eye is swollen from Aaron.

And a third time, splitting open the cut on my lip from where Aaron hit me yesterday morning.

You fool, you worthless, effing fool.

I do it again, hard enough to knock me off balance. I fall and catch myself on my hands and spit out some blood onto the path.

I look up at the girl, breathing hard.

Nothing. Just looking back at me and nothing.

We both turn to look across the river. They’ve got to the bit where they can see the bridge clearly. See us clearly on the other side. We can see the faces of the men as they ride. Hear the chatter of their Noise as it flies up the river at us. Mr MacInerny, the Mayor’s best horseman, is in the lead, the Mayor riding behind, looking as calm as if it was nothing more than a Sunday ride.

We got maybe a minute, probably less.

I turn back to the girl, trying to stand, but I’m so tired. So, so tired. “We might as well run,” I say, spitting out more blood. “We might as well try.”

And I see her face change.

Her mouth opens wide, her eyes, too, and suddenly she yanks her bag out in front of her and shoves her hand in it.

“What’re you doing?” I say.

She takes out the campfire box, looking all around her till I see her see a good sized rock. She sets the box down and raises up the rock.

“No, wait, we could use–”

She brings down the rock and the box cracks. She picks it up and twists it hard, making it crack some more. It starts to leak some kind of fluid. She moves to the bridge and starts flinging fluid all over the knots on the closest stake, shaking out the last drops into a puddle at the base.

The riders are coming up to the bridge, coming up, coming up, coming up–

“Hurry!” I say.

The girl turns to me, telling me with her hands to get back. I scrabble back a little ways, grabbing Manchee by his scruff and taking him with me. She steps back as far as she can, holding out the remains of the box at arm’s length and pressing a button on it. I hear a clicking sound. She tosses the box in the air and jumps back towards me.

The horses reach the bridge–

The girl lands almost on top of me and we watch as the campfire box falls–

Falls–

Falls–

Towards the little puddle of liquid, clicking as it goes–

Mr MacInerny’s horse puts a hoof on the bridge to cross it–

The campfire box lands in the puddle–

Clicks one more time–

Then–

WHOOOOMP!!!!

The air is sucked outta my lungs as a fireball WAY bigger than what you’d think for that little amount of fluid makes the world quiet for a second and then–

BOOM!!!!!

It blasts away the ropes and the stake, spraying fiery splinters all over us and obliterating all thought, Noise and sound.

When we can look up again, the bridge is already so much on fire it’s starting to lean to one side and we see Mr MacInerny’s horse rear up and stumble, trying to back up into four or five more oncoming horses.

The flames roar a weird bright green and the sudden heat’s incredible, like the worst sunburn ever and I think we’re gonna catch fire ourselves when this end of the bridge just falls right away, taking Mr MacInerny and his horse with it. We sit up and watch them fall and fall and fall into the river below, way too far to ever live thru it. The bridge is still attached at their end and it slaps the facing cliff but it’s burning so fierce it won’t be no time at all before the whole thing is just ash. The Mayor and Mr Prentiss Jr and the others all have to back their horses away from it.

The girl crawls away from me and we lay there a second, just breathing and coughing, trying to stop being dazed.

Holy crap.

“Y’all right?” I say to Manchee, still held by my hand.

“Fire, Todd!” he barks.

“Yeah,” I cough. “Big fire. You all right?” I say to the girl, who’s still crouching, still coughing. “Man, what was in that thing?”

But of course she don’t say nothing.

“TODD HEWITT!” I hear from across the canyon.

I look up. It’s the Mayor, shouting his first words ever to me in person, thru sheets of smoke and heat that make him look all wavy.

“We’re not finished, young Todd,” he calls, over the crackle of the burning bridge and the roar of the water below. “Not by a long way.”

And he’s calm and still ruddy clean and looking like there’s no way he’s not gonna get what he wants.

I stand up, hold out my arm and give him two fingers but he’s already disappearing behind big clouds of smoke.

I cough and spit blood again. “We gotta keep moving,” I say, coughing some more. “Maybe they’ll turn back, maybe there’s no other way across, but we shouldn’t wait to find out.”

I see the knife in the dust. Shame comes right quick, like a new pain all its own. The things I said. I reach down and pick it up and put it back in its sheath.

The girl’s still got her head down, coughing to herself. I pick up her bag for her and hold it out for her to take.

“Come on,” I say. “We can at least get away from the smoke.”

She looks up at me.

I look back at her.

My face burns and not from the heat.

“I’m sorry.” I look away from her, from her eyes and face, blank and quiet as ever.

I turn back up the path.

“Viola,” I hear.

I spin around, look at her.

“What?” I say.

She’s looking back at me.

She’s opening her mouth.

She’s talking.

“My name,” she says. “It’s Viola.”